social – Plain and White

I wasn’t able to attend the Tuesday studio, so instead I spent the time reading Daniel Palmer’s “Mobile Media Photography” and checking the course guideline about the future assignment.

Palmer talked briefly about the evolution of mobile photography, an event he had predicted “could mark a change in social record-keeping…” but even then he didn’t thought that it’s progress could have gone so far and critical. He observed that mobile phones has changed the way photography behaves. He noted many other academic’s response to it. Such as Daniel Rubenstein calling the spontaneous photographic practices as “visible speech” because of how quickly the images can be transmitted. Mikko Villi then added by saying those instantly transmitted photographs extends the traditional photography form of communication. Pictorial conversation or ‘visual chit chat’ is now the norm of communicating.

Then Palmer focuses on IPhone, the most popular and one of the most successful camera phone. He talks about the history of IPhone’s features and the emergence of IPhone applications, that affects the aesthetic of camera phone images. He said Instagram, “a hybrid of the Polaroid and the telegram” said Chesher that enables users to connect directly and personally with an audience by sharing their visual experience.

Photographs attract eyeballs, and where there are eyeballs there lies the possibility to make money

Camera phones played a role in the rising ‘citizen journalist’ for reporting world events. Their Raw images are many times used by the media (albeit sometimes unverified for it’s legitimacy) and Palmer believe this would only likely to continue.

Because many people may use iphone over the same area, Kate Shilton describe “participatory sensing” as an emerging form of mass data collection that may, under appropriate conditions, be conceived as a form of self-surveillance-an opportunity for individuals and groups to provide possibilities for community exploration, such it sometimes be called ‘reality mining’ to provide information to benefit the community. For example, the VandalTrak app allows its user to take photographs of illegal graffiti which could be uploaded with a geo-tag for police and other organizations.

Camera phones are no longer only concerned with reproducing the world, but might also enhance and augment our experience of it.

Because of the prevalence of photographers (not professional ones) of exploiting privacy or private pictures being unleashed/ used inappropriately, now There are mistrust of professional photographers working in public spaces like the beach, even though in history photographers are celebrated to work without the explicit permission of their subjects.

Photography has long been involved in configuring the boundaries between private and public space

Palmer’s points sound very interesting and I agree with some of It. Social media and camera phones has thinned the line of “Privacy” and often even questions the existence of it’s own meaning for people who knows it. It’s use and benefits are a double edge sword, because it can benefit anyone, regardless of intention/purpose. This brings back the question, what is photography, and what is mobile media photography? Does photography mentions a specific skill, or an ability?

The readings gave me a lot of contemplation. Here are some of the points that surprised me the most

Technology was used sparingly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, refering [to] the study of the arts…But by 1860 its meanings began [to] shift to its modern usage; the word had come to mean the system of mechanical and industrial arts

According to Wikipedia, the term ‘technology’ was used to describe useful art, forms of art that is manufactured and crafted, and basically the antonym of performing/fine art.

The article also cited from another author: William Barret

“…if our civilization were to lose its techniques, all our machines and apparatus would become one vast pile of junk”

This basically applies to all of our media work right now. No matter how expensive and advance our equipment is, without the right skill and technique the content will basically be a pile of junk

It seems that ‘technique’ is not just a specific of skills towards a certain kind of machinery, but also towards the body. Marcel Mauss believes that techniques “crucial to culture and to the transmission of culture as technologies”. The way we walk, we swim is a result of techniques pass down from our ancestors. It’s effective and traditional.

As the time goes, culture is associated with the artistic or the mind. The romantics embraced culture while the industrial opposed it, labeling the two word as if in black and white, completely contrast to each other.

Culture is dynamic because,…ideas and values change, often quite quickly, over time. Older attitudes to culture may be susperseded, or they may overlap with new ideas, or the older values may re-emerge at a later time.

like culture, technology is also messy. Technology such as the internet has allowed everyone who have accessed to it to put whatever content they want, whether it might challenge other people or not.

While corporations attempted to wring new profits out of this huge entity, governments sought to impose regulations on what they saw as an ungoverned system. The latter attempt, at least was made difficult by the properties of the internet as a global network. As one of instance of the globalization process, the internet does not respect national boundaries or jurisdictions

Just to show that the internet has become a powerful entity, capable of passing the fences each country has built.

Because the reading is way too long, I couldn’t give out all the points, because it would be stagnant and boring. Do you have any points you want to point out?

Mobile Media Photography

Culture and Technology

The readings gave me a lot of contemplation. Here are some of the points that surprised me the most